posted
My best friend was looking through the music on my laptop the other day when we were trading pictures and found this cache of music that I'd never seen before. It was in my shared music folder. Anyway, she started playing it, and I was like:
"Hey! That's a great song, who sings that?"
To which she replied "You tell me, it's your music."
I was confused, and still have no idea where the music came from, but some of it isn't bad. There's some from The Shins, and Alanis Morissette, which were the only two I'd ever heard of before. Then some from Mark Knopfler, Deardorf Peterson Group, King Sunne Ade & His African Beats, and Robert Randolph & the Family Band. (edit to add: I also just found another folder with a ton of other music I'd never seen before).
But there was one gem on there too, Rosie Thomas. She's apparently a Christian alternative artist I guess, and while the first two things I heard by her didn't really resonate with me, I thought she had a great voice, so I listened to the third, "Red Rover," which is a fantastic song. Quite frankly it sounds more Country than like Christian rock/alternative whatever to me. Anyways, if anyone has the chance, check her out, it's nice easy listening, and she has a great voice. I'm also going to assume that since the music magically appeared on my computer, than I can share it with other. After all, it DID appear in my shared music folder, so if anyone wants it, let me know.
Has the magical music appearance thing happened to anyone else?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
In freshman year, somebody in my dorm got into my shared file and deleted all my music. So the opposite has happened to me. Probably somebody uploaded it without your knowledge while you were on a lan network. Hmmm.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Possible I suppose, but the only network I'm ever on is my home network, and I KNOW that my mom and brother have zero idea how to do that.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I know Windows puts a few tracks of some songs in your music folder (which show up in your Windows Media player) and a couple wallpaper images in your picture folder by default. I usually delete it right away, but those groups sound familiar.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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My sister had problems with their computer running slugishly, so asked my brother, the uber geek, to take a look. He found a hidden folder that held tons of music and other files which was uploaded to that computer by someone - unknown to my sister - who got access to their computer over the internet and used their hard drive as a file server. Those files were being constantly downloaded by other people on the internet.
This would be why firewalls and anti-malware would be so important. The person likely gained access to my sister's computer through a Trojan horse.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Re: what quidscribis said, that's a good way for them to hide from the RIAA looking for people uploading music illegally. Instead of their IP being exposed, your IP is identified as the guilty party.
Posts: 2880 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I'm pretty sure some versions of windows install with a small music library. Think I found and deleted those on my new comp.
Posts: 375 | Registered: Mar 2005
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similarly, a friend once put a few NiN mp3s on my comp and it took a year or so, 4-5 deletions and a reformatting of the harddrive to actually get rid of them. I kept deleting the files and somehow they still kept popping up on my playlist... I'm convinced they were haunted.
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I doubt it Sarah, I don't recall her using my laptop at any given point.
I think it might be part of that library of music that just comes with the computer now that TK mentions it. But I can't be sure. I DO have a firewall up and running, and I never download music on this computer, only on my crappy desktop.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:My sister had problems with their computer running slugishly, so asked my brother, the uber geek, to take a look. He found a hidden folder that held tons of music and other files which was uploaded to that computer by someone - unknown to my sister - who got access to their computer over the internet and used their hard drive as a file server. Those files were being constantly downloaded by other people on the internet.
posted
You can read about it on my brother's site.
If you have a software firewall installed, such as ZoneAlarm, it monitors every program/process that is allowed access to the internet. You could install ZoneAlarm and watch to see which programs request access. Make sure you know what the program is before you allow it access to the internet. If you don't know what it is, do a Googlesearch on it. But, you know, you won't have access to Google searches if you don't allow IE or FireFox access, so make sure you allow those.
For that matter, you can run task manager and run a Google search on every single process in that list that you don't recognize as valid. Most of them will be processes that are required by Windoze, but if there is any malware currently running, it'll be in your task list.
To prevent this sort of thing from happening, read the list on my brother's site for his recommendations. He calls himself an alpha geek, but he's really the alpha geek's alpha geek.
A short list of things I would do to prevent this from happening or stopping it from happening include:
Run anti-adware/spyware programs like Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy. Run two or three in succession (shut the program down when you're done to run the next one, otherwise you'll have problems.) I say run two or three because they seem to catch different things.
Also, make sure your antivirus software is up to date. If it isn't, update it and scan your system - not just the program files, but everything, and put it into full paranoia mode.
Make sure you have software firewall running. See, a hardware firewall can prevent hackers from getting in to your computer from the outside, but, and this is a pretty big but, if you receive malware - email from a friend or downloading a file off the internet, for example - and allow it to run on your computer (and by allow, I mean not actively preventing it from happening with up to date antivirus software, for example), then that script can still access the internet because your hardware firewall is designed to prevent traffic from getting in, not traffic from getting out. Once that script starts running, it contacts its creator and can start doing its business, and because that script initiated communication from your computer, that hacker now has access to your computer despite your hardware firewall. A software firewall, however, can be configured to ALSO prevent unwanted traffic from leaving your computer. The worm cannot contact its creator and your hard drive cannot be used as a server.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Mmm, I have ZoneAlarm, and will probably put it on my school lappy when I get it this fall. I like it because 1) it's free 2) it's simple and 3) it works.
What makes me angry is that there are oppurtunists out there -- heck, even some small corporations -- that have absolutely no qualms about stealing my HD space and bandwith so that they can serve up ads and other such nonsense. I've had days where I've spent hours in safe mode cleaning junk out of the Registry on my sister's computer.
This type of thing makes me want to replace their FTP files with some malicious software.
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